Digital Games

In light of contemporary discussions about the future of robots as "emotional laborers" and social service workers, Shalev Moran looks back at the history of underrecognized emotional services offered by Non-Player Characters in digital games and media, and what they can teach us about the role of robots in society

CoVid masks. Gas masks. Veils & niqabs. Fortnight Skins. Oxygen masks. Tactical masks. Instagram filters. Batman and Bane masks. A historical and personal voyage through the past 30 years of face coverings and masks, and through the uncanny anxieties and fears awakened when one covers their face.

המשחק Control מאיץ בנו להתמודד עם האתגר, לעשות סדר בבלגאן הפיזי והמנטאלי ולהחזיר את תחושת השליטה בחיינו

Grand phenomena have the power to shake our consciousness, trigger anxiety and even paralysis as we face their sheer size and depth. From the dawn of history, we linked them with imagery that made them easier for us to grasp - through religion, art and philosophy. The climate crisis discourse of the past decade and the current public debate on the coronavirus crisis, summoned huge and threatening numbers and introduced a variety of inhuman scales into our lives, and we require new images that would mediate them for us. Surprisingly, one such set of images can be found in one of the most infamous entertainment genres of out times: digital clicker games. Through comparisons to sci-fi works in literature and philosophy, we will examine how these simple computer games offer some remedy to the special anxiety that fills us when we hear news of the exponential growth of infection or the rise in global median temperatures.